Unlike the previous FAQ blog post we published on system architecture questions, in today’s article I wish to focus on presenting some of the most useful support tools SAP provides. These can be used during an implementation project to identify inconsistencies and errors before full deployment, or to troubleshoot an issue when identified in a productive system.
We hope that you double check and stay informed of the support tools SAP provides:
All of these tools and support platforms offer different approaches to correcting issues that may appear in your systems, and we begin with one of the most straightforward options.
The SAP EWM Check Monitor
The first option in our list, the SAP EWM Check Monitor (CHM) is a tool that helps identify and correct data inconsistencies in customer systems. The checks are organized in a hierarchical structure starting with categories of checks, which in turn contain groups of checks. This hierarchical structure corresponds with the major application areas defined in SAP EWM. There is already an extensive set of standard check and corrective functions that have been implemented by SAP. The checks can be run in an ad-hoc manner, but the real advantage of the tools is its high level of customization which allows users to define types of checks that they wish to perform more frequently, and even define a specific schedule or intervals for these checks.
To define these checks that users want to perform at their own pace and frequency, they can create and save so called check profiles. These profiles contain the selection of checks to be executed and parameters for selecting the objects that are to be checked. The results of these checks can be collected and displayed in so called check logs. These are extended business application logs that contain standard messages and optional data attached to these messages. These logs can be saved for later analysis. There are different check log views to support the analysis. These views can be defined in order to group messages based on some common attributes (e.g. belonging to a single delivery item, warehouse task or HU).
The official SAP EWM Check Monitor wiki page has a full detailed breakdown on the features available in the CHM tool, as well as several links to additional information sources.
Alternatively, you can also find out more in SAP Note 3058435 "EWM Check Monitor" where we made available a list of notes and Knowledge Based Articles (KBA) with more "How To" steps you need to know to perform some corrections from your side.
I would also recommend you keep in mind and bookmark this recent blog post on how to correct Document Flow issues with the help of the SAP EWM Check Moni.... Thanks to recent improvements, it is possible now to detect and correct such inconsistencies without opening a new OSS case and wait for SAP experts for the correction. The video embedded in the blog post shows how you can use the Check Monitor tool to detect and correct this kind of inconsistency.
The SAP EarlyWatch Alert
Before we can talk about the SAP EWM specific functionality of this tool, we must first briefly go over what is SAP EarlyWatch Alert (EWA). SAP EWA is a tool that monitors essential administrative areas of SAP components and provides updates on their stability and performance. This tool runs on customer systems to proactively collect performance and stability relevant information. The collected information is sent to SAP via SAP Solution Manager. On SAP side proactive checks will be performed and recommendations to avoid system issues before they become critical are generated. To check and display these recommendations, SAP offers the application SAP EarlyWatch Alert Workspace, where customers can also download the complete results as a report document.
Since March 2021, this service was enhanced to include and display application checks for SAP Extended Warehouse Management.
The SAP EWM specific checks were introduced to achieve the following goals:
Below are some examples of available checks and their effect:
For a full list of the checks made available since the initial March 2021 release, please refer to SAP Note 3018957 “Application Specific Extended Warehouse Management Checks in SAP Service Sessions”, which is under continuous development and is updated on a regular basis.
To find a more detailed description of this tool, which other checks were made available to the customers in the initial release, as well as links to other fundamental readings and information sources regarding this tool, I recommend the “Introduction of application specific Extended Warehouse Management Checks in SAP EarlyWatch Alert” article.
For SAP EarlyWatch Alert activation details please refer to this blog post.
To get a comprehensive overview about the customer landscape SAP offers the SAP EarlyWatch Alert Workspace in the SAP ONE Support Launchpad. To view the latest alerts that have been raised in your system, you can access the SAP EarlyWatch Alert Solution Finder.
The SAP Note Analyzer
Our third tool is the SAP Note Analyzer. The motivation behind this tool is that typically there are many SAP Notes created by multiple application teams for a feature. Customers then must implement many SAP Notes to ensure the application is up and running. This leads to high administrative efforts on customer side and the risk that a single note is forgotten to be implemented or a note is not on latest version implemented.
A solution was needed to verify that all required notes for a certain feature/topic are implemented and updated (on latest version) in the customer system.
For that purpose, the transaction SNOTES was enhanced with a new feature the SAP Note Analyzer. With this new feature the analysis and implementation of SAP Note bundles becomes more simplified, intuitive, user-friendly and scalable.
For specific SAP EWM topics, SAP has launched SAP Note 3157198 "Implement important Notes for Stock Inconsistencies using Note Analyzer" to bundle important notes for stock inconsistencies that can be checked using Note Analyzer.
SAP updates new available SAP Note Analyzer bundles for EWM via SAP Note 3223633 “Note Analyzer in SAP EWM”. By using this tool, users can check the implementation state of required SAP Notes along with some additional checks. Depending on the results, follow-up actions are proposed.
In order to have the SAP Note Analyzer available, please refer to SAP Note 3200109 “SNOTE: Note Analyzer”.
The ABAP Test Cockpit
If you need to enhance SAP standard coding with custom coding, the ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) is SAP’s central quality assurance toolset for static functional, performance and security code checks and ABAP Unit tests for your ABAP programs. In order to ensure a smooth migration and comparable check results throughout your company, the ABAP Test Cockpit is compatible with SAP’s Code Inspector. This means you can reuse your custom Code Inspector checks and variants in the ABAP Test Cockpit.
With SAP S/4HANA OP 2022, we plan to deliver ATC checks specifically in the context of SAP EWM. In addition, the downport of SAP EWM ATC checks to lower SAP EWM releases is planned in the upcoming months.
For more information about the supported quality management processes, please take a look at the corresponding Best Practices document:
For more details about the involved roles (developers, quality extperts, admins) please take a look at the corresponding Getting Started guides:
The Support Assistant for EWM
And finally, I want to mention the Enhanced Support Assistant for EWM, which is offering much more answers and guided help in many areas, especially for issues in Warehouse Order Processing and Document Flow.
With this Next-Generation Support approach from SAP you can profit on improved customer support, anytime, anywhere, leveraging the latest technology and tools to speed up time to answers and provide a delightful experience.
Customers benefit with this new guided incident creation method in multiple ways:
To access the Support Assistant, simply visit the SAP ONE Support Launchpad and start the incident creation process. Select the product for which you want to report an incident and the support assistant window pops up on the right hand side of the screen.
For more general information about Support Assistant, see Improved Incident Creation: Try the New Support Assistant.
FIND OUT MORE!
For more information about SAP Extended Warehouse Management, please follow us on social media, our YouTube channel or our community pages:
SAP EWM Community:
https://www.sap.com/community/topics/extended-warehouse-management.html
SAP Digital Supply Chain Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELmE2CEAkcwqpBLnuZHufA
EWM LinkedIn Community:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1952257/
Release information and restrictions of embedded EWM on SAP S/4HANA 2021:
Release note for EWM in S/4HANA 2021
Release information and restrictions of Decentralized EWM on SAP S/4HANA 2021:
Release note for Decentralized EWM in S/4HANA 2021
For a complete list of Q&A from the EWM community, please access this link:
https://answers.sap.com/tags/01200615320800000705
In case you do not find your specific question there, feel free to post your question via the following form:
https://answers.sap.com/questions/ask.html?primaryTagId=01200615320800000705
We hope that you double check and stay informed of the support tools SAP provides:
- The SAP EWM Check Monitor
- The SAP EarlyWatch Alert
- The SAP Note Analyzer
- The ABAP Test Cockpit
- The Support Assistant for SAP EWM
All of these tools and support platforms offer different approaches to correcting issues that may appear in your systems, and we begin with one of the most straightforward options.
The SAP EWM Check Monitor
The first option in our list, the SAP EWM Check Monitor (CHM) is a tool that helps identify and correct data inconsistencies in customer systems. The checks are organized in a hierarchical structure starting with categories of checks, which in turn contain groups of checks. This hierarchical structure corresponds with the major application areas defined in SAP EWM. There is already an extensive set of standard check and corrective functions that have been implemented by SAP. The checks can be run in an ad-hoc manner, but the real advantage of the tools is its high level of customization which allows users to define types of checks that they wish to perform more frequently, and even define a specific schedule or intervals for these checks.
To define these checks that users want to perform at their own pace and frequency, they can create and save so called check profiles. These profiles contain the selection of checks to be executed and parameters for selecting the objects that are to be checked. The results of these checks can be collected and displayed in so called check logs. These are extended business application logs that contain standard messages and optional data attached to these messages. These logs can be saved for later analysis. There are different check log views to support the analysis. These views can be defined in order to group messages based on some common attributes (e.g. belonging to a single delivery item, warehouse task or HU).
The Check Monitor Hierarchy
The official SAP EWM Check Monitor wiki page has a full detailed breakdown on the features available in the CHM tool, as well as several links to additional information sources.
Alternatively, you can also find out more in SAP Note 3058435 "EWM Check Monitor" where we made available a list of notes and Knowledge Based Articles (KBA) with more "How To" steps you need to know to perform some corrections from your side.
I would also recommend you keep in mind and bookmark this recent blog post on how to correct Document Flow issues with the help of the SAP EWM Check Moni.... Thanks to recent improvements, it is possible now to detect and correct such inconsistencies without opening a new OSS case and wait for SAP experts for the correction. The video embedded in the blog post shows how you can use the Check Monitor tool to detect and correct this kind of inconsistency.
The SAP EarlyWatch Alert
Before we can talk about the SAP EWM specific functionality of this tool, we must first briefly go over what is SAP EarlyWatch Alert (EWA). SAP EWA is a tool that monitors essential administrative areas of SAP components and provides updates on their stability and performance. This tool runs on customer systems to proactively collect performance and stability relevant information. The collected information is sent to SAP via SAP Solution Manager. On SAP side proactive checks will be performed and recommendations to avoid system issues before they become critical are generated. To check and display these recommendations, SAP offers the application SAP EarlyWatch Alert Workspace, where customers can also download the complete results as a report document.
Since March 2021, this service was enhanced to include and display application checks for SAP Extended Warehouse Management.
The EarlyWatch Alert service for SAP EWM (example)
The SAP EWM specific checks were introduced to achieve the following goals:
- Update the customers proactively on issues and preventive recommendations
- React to issues such as bottlenecks before they become critical
- Minimize risk of critical down time and data inconsistencies
- Provide information about critical fixes and service packages required for safe system operations
- Ensure system performance and product stability
Below are some examples of available checks and their effect:
- LIME Inconsistency Check – triggers an alert to customers who are at the risk of having inconsistencies due to overload on the Enqueue Server.
- Failed and Unprocessed Queues in SMQ1 and SMQ2 (older than 2 weeks) – alerts customers with a ‘RED’ rating in case of failed queues in SMQ1 and SMQ2 older than 2 weeks and with a ‘YELLOW’ rating in case of unprocessed queues in SMQ1 and SMQ2 older than 2 weeks.
- Failed and Unprocessed PPF Actions in EWM (older than 2 weeks) – similarly, this check alerts customers with a ‘RED’ rating in case on failed PPF actions and a ‘YELLOW’ rating in case of unprocessed PPF actions.
- Missing important EWM SAP Notes for inconsistencies – this check alerts with a ‘YELLOW’ rating in case customers are missing the most important EWM SAP Notes that prevent inconsistencies and are relevant for the Support-pack installed on their SAP EWM system.
- Recommended Background Jobs not set up in SAP EWM – this check alerts customers with a ‘YELLOW’ rating in case there are some of the recommended background jobs missing and a ‘RED’ rating in case only 40% of the recommended background jobs are set up for SAP EWM.
- Overdue EWM Outbound deliveries / Warehouse Tasks created more than a year ago - this check provides ‘YELLOW’ rating alerts in case they have open outbound deliveries or open warehouse tasks in SAP EWM which are older than 1 year.
For a full list of the checks made available since the initial March 2021 release, please refer to SAP Note 3018957 “Application Specific Extended Warehouse Management Checks in SAP Service Sessions”, which is under continuous development and is updated on a regular basis.
To find a more detailed description of this tool, which other checks were made available to the customers in the initial release, as well as links to other fundamental readings and information sources regarding this tool, I recommend the “Introduction of application specific Extended Warehouse Management Checks in SAP EarlyWatch Alert” article.
For SAP EarlyWatch Alert activation details please refer to this blog post.
To get a comprehensive overview about the customer landscape SAP offers the SAP EarlyWatch Alert Workspace in the SAP ONE Support Launchpad. To view the latest alerts that have been raised in your system, you can access the SAP EarlyWatch Alert Solution Finder.
The SAP Note Analyzer
Our third tool is the SAP Note Analyzer. The motivation behind this tool is that typically there are many SAP Notes created by multiple application teams for a feature. Customers then must implement many SAP Notes to ensure the application is up and running. This leads to high administrative efforts on customer side and the risk that a single note is forgotten to be implemented or a note is not on latest version implemented.
A solution was needed to verify that all required notes for a certain feature/topic are implemented and updated (on latest version) in the customer system.
For that purpose, the transaction SNOTES was enhanced with a new feature the SAP Note Analyzer. With this new feature the analysis and implementation of SAP Note bundles becomes more simplified, intuitive, user-friendly and scalable.
How to launch Note Analyzer in the SNOTE Transaction
For specific SAP EWM topics, SAP has launched SAP Note 3157198 "Implement important Notes for Stock Inconsistencies using Note Analyzer" to bundle important notes for stock inconsistencies that can be checked using Note Analyzer.
SAP updates new available SAP Note Analyzer bundles for EWM via SAP Note 3223633 “Note Analyzer in SAP EWM”. By using this tool, users can check the implementation state of required SAP Notes along with some additional checks. Depending on the results, follow-up actions are proposed.
In order to have the SAP Note Analyzer available, please refer to SAP Note 3200109 “SNOTE: Note Analyzer”.
The ABAP Test Cockpit
If you need to enhance SAP standard coding with custom coding, the ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) is SAP’s central quality assurance toolset for static functional, performance and security code checks and ABAP Unit tests for your ABAP programs. In order to ensure a smooth migration and comparable check results throughout your company, the ABAP Test Cockpit is compatible with SAP’s Code Inspector. This means you can reuse your custom Code Inspector checks and variants in the ABAP Test Cockpit.
With SAP S/4HANA OP 2022, we plan to deliver ATC checks specifically in the context of SAP EWM. In addition, the downport of SAP EWM ATC checks to lower SAP EWM releases is planned in the upcoming months.
For more information about the supported quality management processes, please take a look at the corresponding Best Practices document:
For more details about the involved roles (developers, quality extperts, admins) please take a look at the corresponding Getting Started guides:
- Getting Started with the ABAP Test Cockpit for QMs and Administrators
- Getting Started with the ABAP Test Cockpit for Developers
The Support Assistant for EWM
And finally, I want to mention the Enhanced Support Assistant for EWM, which is offering much more answers and guided help in many areas, especially for issues in Warehouse Order Processing and Document Flow.
With this Next-Generation Support approach from SAP you can profit on improved customer support, anytime, anywhere, leveraging the latest technology and tools to speed up time to answers and provide a delightful experience.
Customers benefit with this new guided incident creation method in multiple ways:
- Easily assign the correct solution area, leading to the correct assignment of SAP experts to assist. The incident reaches the right expert much faster.
- Learn about possible trouble shooting steps & tools to analyze for example handling of corrections for inconsistencies on your own.
- Solve a situation even before creating the incident with the support of targeted, relevant knowledge documents.
- Capture all relevant information in very structured way for SAP to process your issue faster.
The SAP Support Assistant
To access the Support Assistant, simply visit the SAP ONE Support Launchpad and start the incident creation process. Select the product for which you want to report an incident and the support assistant window pops up on the right hand side of the screen.
For more general information about Support Assistant, see Improved Incident Creation: Try the New Support Assistant.
FIND OUT MORE!
For more information about SAP Extended Warehouse Management, please follow us on social media, our YouTube channel or our community pages:
SAP EWM Community:
https://www.sap.com/community/topics/extended-warehouse-management.html
SAP Digital Supply Chain Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELmE2CEAkcwqpBLnuZHufA
EWM LinkedIn Community:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1952257/
Release information and restrictions of embedded EWM on SAP S/4HANA 2021:
Release note for EWM in S/4HANA 2021
Release information and restrictions of Decentralized EWM on SAP S/4HANA 2021:
Release note for Decentralized EWM in S/4HANA 2021
For a complete list of Q&A from the EWM community, please access this link:
https://answers.sap.com/tags/01200615320800000705
In case you do not find your specific question there, feel free to post your question via the following form:
https://answers.sap.com/questions/ask.html?primaryTagId=01200615320800000705
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